The first step or skandha, the birth of ego, is called “form” or basic ignorance. We ignore the open, fluid, and intelligent quality of space. When a gap or space occurs in our experience of mind, when there is a sudden glimpse of awareness, openness, absence of self, then a suspicion arises: “Suppose I find that there is no solid me? That possibility scares me. I don’t want to go into that.” That abstract paranoia, the discomfort that something may be wrong, is the source of karmic chain reactions. It is the fear of ultimate confusion and despair. The fear of the absence of the self, of the egoless state, is a constant threat to us. “Suppose it is true, what then? I am afraid to look.” We want to maintain some solidity but the only material available with which to work is space, the absence of ego, so we try to solidify or freeze that experience of space. Ignorance in this case is not stupidity, but it is a kind of stubbornness. Suddenly we are bewildered by the discovery of selflessness and do not want to accept it; we want to hold on to something.

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Let’s take a closer look at the above passage. Trungpa is defining basic ignorance as is an epistemic act that creates the original subject/object split. Something motivates the separation of self-side from world-side, and turns sense-flow into objects for a subject. Basic ignorance seems to be the act the creates the original subject/object split. Something motivates the separation of self-side from world-side, and turns sense-flow into objects for a subject. There arises an awareness of a plurality of objects, an awareness that becomes aware of itself as an epistemic unity common to many known objects.

What is this motivator? Trungpa says fear but whence this fear? We are compelled to find ourselves as a substance inside of space—as something solid and real for the sake of security. But why are we compelled to find self as real substance? It must be that we intuit ourselves as being a real substance. We are not so whence this intuition? Something is standing in for reality and substantiality.

This basis, as you may have guessed, is homeostatic propulsion, the élan vital, the persistent motion that effects the self-maintenance of a machine that self-repairs, seeks and ingests energy, avoids perturbations that would “kill” it (stop its self-maintenance), and learns about its environment. Its simplest instances are cells and these have a proclivity for surviving. Cell-machines react to disruption in ways that preserve their homeostasis.

The self (consciousness, subjectivity) is neither Lego nor pattern, but a moving pattern—a process. A process is neither a stuff nor a shape. It is a shape-working over time. The self is a process and because it persists it takes itself to be a substance. But where did it get that concept from? Have we encountered bona fide substances? Strictly speaking, a substance is a not a property but merely a persisting solidity, something that truly obliterates spatial emptiness and is materially identical from moment to moment. When have we encountered this? It is actually a fantasy projected by the force (epistemic intentionality or expectation) of the grammatical subject. Even in 3-space, there are no referents that correspond to what is actually thought when we say This and point to an object in sensation. We do not mean its properties, though these do “belong” to the substance. A substance is a basis of objective belonging. The belonging is what we intend when we assert is and point to an object in sensation. This is ___. The “___” can change yet This (we believe) remains the same. Yes, in fact, “This” does remain the same—its the same grammatical rule, a structure of language, a structure we use to abstract universal concepts from perceptual experience. From this we build the inferential world that includes the empirical sciences. We discover laws in nature because we have logical laws in language—If this is a mammal and all mammals have hearts then this one really will. We tap into real world possibility and necessity when we exercise our innate linguistic syntax in our heads.

We have never met a true physical analog for our grammatical subject, but our bodies are so huge (on the scale of real physical unites, which are the basic bundles of heavy quarks bound by sometimes stable configurations of electron clouds. These are the basic solids, but they are neither perduring solids nor even located in the way that our pointing and This-asserting would like us to believe.

This is what is motivating our hunt for a solid self—our identification of being real with being a referent of This. Really, the self is the This that says “This.” It is a special object because it is aware of everything, and everything does not look like self or awareness but looks like an other (object). I point, and I-pointing am never the target of I-pointing. What

The pointer is different from the world it points at. First, it is always pointing outwards at something outside itself. Second, it is aware and everything is something it is aware of. And the things it is aware of are not the awareness itself. I am awareness, and that is not awareness, because if it were, it would be “I” and I wouldn’t see it as “that.” Third, the pointer is integrating and unifying, and this distinguishes it from the plurality and flow of sensibility. Cognition produces what appears to be a unitary awareness of a plurality of objects, an awareness that becomes aware of itself as an epistemic unity common to many known objects. There are many targets but only one pointer. In contrast to the fluid plurality of sensation, the epistemic subject appears to be a perduring and unitary static. This solidity is borrowed from the sensation of physical resistance.

My thesis is that the point-like unity which we intuit as the self, which Trungpa here contrasts to spaciousness:

The first step or skandha, the birth of ego, is called “form” or basic ignorance. We ignore the open, fluid, and intelligent quality of space.

When a gap or space occurs in our experience of mind, when there is a sudden glimpse of awareness, openness, absence of self, then a suspicion arises: “Suppose I find that there is no solid me? That possibility scares me. I don’t want to go into that.”

That abstract paranoia, the discomfort that something may be wrong, is the source of karmic chain reactions. It is the fear of ultimate confusion and despair. The fear of the absence of the self, of the egoless state, is a constant threat to us. “Suppose it is true, what then? I am afraid to look.”

Then the next step is the attempt to find a way of occupying ourselves, diverting our attention from our aloneness. The karmic chain reaction begins.

Karma is dependent upon the relativity of this and that—my existence and my projections—and karma is continually reborn as we continually try to busy ourselves. In other words, there is a fear of not being confirmed by our projections.

One must constantly try to prove that one does exist by feeling one’s projections as a solid thing. Feeling the solidity of something seemingly outside you reassures you that you are a solid entity as well. This is the second skandha, “feeling.”

In the third stage, ego develops three strategies or impulses with which to relate to its projections: indifference, passion and aggression. These impulses are guided by perception. Perception, in this case, is the self-conscious feeling that you must officially report back to central headquarters what is happening in any given moment. Then you can manipulate each situation by organizing another strategy.

In the strategy of indifference, we numb any sensitive areas that we want to avoid, that we think might hurt us. We put on a suit of armor. The second strategy is passion—trying to grasp things and eat them up. It is a magnetizing process. Usually we do not grasp if we feel rich enough. But whenever there is a feeling of poverty, hunger, impotence, then we reach out, we extend our tentacles and attempt to hold onto something. Aggression, the third strategy, is also based on the experience of poverty, the feeling that you cannot survive and therefore must ward off anything that threatens your property or food. Moreover, the more aware you are of the possibilities of being threatened, the more desperate your reaction becomes. You try to run faster and faster in order to find a way of feeding or defending yourself. This speeding about is a form of aggression. Aggression, passion, indifference are part of the third skandha, “perception/impulse.”

Ignorance, feeling, impulse and perception--all are instinctive processes. We operate a radar system which senses our territory. Yet we cannot establish ego properly without intellect, without the ability to conceptualize and name. Since we have so many things happening, we begin to categorize them, putting them into certain pigeon-holes, naming them. We make it official, so to speak. So “intellect” or “concept” is the next stage of ego, the fourth skandha, but even this is not quite enough. We need a very active and efficient mechanism to keep the instinctive and intellectual processes of ego coordinated. That is the last development of ego, the fifth skandha, “consciousness.”

Consciousness consists of emotions and irregular thought patterns, all of which taken together form the different fantasy worlds with which we occupy ourselves. These fantasy worlds are referred to in the scriptures as the “six realms”. The emotions are the highlights of ego, the generals of ego’s army; subconscious thought, day-dreams and other thoughts connect one highlight to another. So thoughts form ego’s army and are constantly in motion, constantly busy. Our thoughts are neurotic in the sense that they are irregular, changing direction all the time and overlapping one another. We continually jump from one thought to the next, from spiritual thoughts to sexual fantasies to money matters to domestic thoughts and so on. The whole development of the five skandhas—ignorance/form, feeling, impulse/perception, concept and consciousness—is an attempt on our part to shield ourselves from the truth of our insubstantiality.